Damage Limitation

Michael Schumacher got it right when he said that Montreal was a case of damage limitation for Ferrari, and there's no question that the Italian team were more than happy to come away with a second place, bearing in mind the state they were in on Friday. Only two points were lost to Fernando Alonso in the title battle, although that was still two more than Michael could really afford at the half-way mark of the season.

The funny thing is that it was Alonso who came to Canada hoping not to lose out too much to his main rival.

"I think it will be difficult to increase [the lead] coming to two races where probably Ferrari are the favourites for the straightline speed they have," the Spaniard said on Thursday. "I think we have to defend here a little bit, and hopefully finish in front of them, but it will be extremely difficult."

Of course, the one unknown factor was what the FIA's new focus on rear wings would do to Ferrari's performance, but in the event it didn't seem to make much difference. Ross Brawn has said all along that it's about the overall efficiency of the package rather than a trick wing arrangement, and that Ferrari were simply more ambitious when setting aero targets for the new V8 machine during the winter. The figures in Canada seemed to give that suggestion some credence.

Ferrari's problem in Canada was tyres rather than straightline performance. On Friday, the team were all at sea as both of the Bridgestone selections proved to be troublesome, and the drivers floundered for grip. The track was still green, and the resurfacing at all the corners ensured that others were also in trouble, but Ferrari suffered more than most. Schumacher was 15th, and Felipe Massa 22nd.

"We're a bit outside [the window] at the moment, because it's been a bit cooler today than expected," Brawn noted that afternoon. "And we're not generating the temperature because the grip's not there with the track being so green.

"The track is very slippery, and the tyres are graining. When that happens, you step out of place with where you want to be. It's not a small loss, it's a big loss. With both tyres - and today we tried two different compounds - we had a similar result. I'm optimistic that tomorrow, with more rubber and the temperature building up, we'll be back to where we want to be."

On Saturday, the team focused on the harder tyre, and while the situation improved, it was not ideal. The biggest problem was getting a quick lap out of the tyre in qualifying.

Bridgestone tyre on the Ferrari © XPB/LAT

"There weren't any other tyres we had, unfortunately, that looked like they'd do the job," Brawn told autosport.com after the race. "You saw the soft that Williams had in the race, and I think [Toyota's] Ralf [Schumacher] was on the soft as well, so it was the only tyre we had that would do the job. When it was clear it didn't have a qualifying lap in it, we had to look at a different approach."

As ever, the first and second qualifying sessions gave the teams a clearer idea about how much fuel to put in for the crucial final session. Q2 was the really important one, and Alonso topped it on 1:14.726, while Schumacher was second on 1:15.139. Ferrari knew that a gap of just over 0.4 seconds represented the real difference between the one-lap packages, so pole was impossible, all things being equal. And Giancarlo Fisichella and Kimi Raikkonen were so close to the German, that they had a good chance of sneaking past too.

So what Brawn did was aim for fourth place, and hope that one or more of the three other key drivers would make a mistake, or perhaps follow the Ferrari strategy. And that strategy was to go as heavy as was practically possible. The idea was to hope to hang on to the others and jump them at the stops by coming in much later.

Ferrari were also hoping for some safety car activity. Every lap under yellow at the start would be one less lap during which the lighter cars could escape. A safety car a few laps into the race would also negate any lead that had been established. And thirdly, if there were several in the early stages, Schumacher would move into a window where stopping once would be just the ticket.

There was another factor at play. Ferrari gambled on rushing in a new start procedure that had been tested by Luca Badoer in Europe. If it worked well, from fourth place Michael might be able to hustle past one of the lighter cars even before Turn 1.

The plan worked perfectly, in that Schumacher qualified behind Alonso, Fisichella and Raikkonen. But there was one problem - Jarno Trulli snuck into fourth place by the tiny margin of 0.018 seconds, throwing Ferrari's strategy into disarray.

"We didn't expect Trulli to be there, that was the key," said Brawn. "If he hadn't been in there, everything would have been perfect. But he was, and maybe we should have gone a little bit lighter to avoid that. That was really the story of the race."

In second qualifying, Trulli had been only seventh, and some 0.416 seconds behind Schumacher. He wasn't seen as a threat at all - indeed, Nico Rosberg and Juan Pablo Montoya were much closer to the Ferrari in that middle session, and were thus more likely to compromise the plan.

The official FIA fuel allowance at Montreal was 2.4kgs a lap, and one leading engineer confirmed that each lap of fuel was worth around 0.065 seconds. In the end, Michael would stop on lap 32 of the race, way after Alonso (23), Fisichella (25), Raikkonen (25) and Trulli (25). It's worth looking at what that meant:

Schumacher's qualifying fuel weight disadvantage

Alonso: 9 laps (0.585s)
Fisichella: 7 laps (0.455s)
Raikkonen: 7 laps (0.455s)
Trulli: 7 laps (0.455s)

Schumacher's actual qualifying disadvantage

Alonso: 1.026s
Fisichella: 0.808s
Raikkonen: 0.600s
Trulli: 0.018s

As you can see Brawn was almost spot on in assuming that Renault's outright advantage of 0.4 seconds from the low-fuel Q2 would be carried on to Q3, and that Raikkonen would also probably be in front.

Michael Schumacher, Ferrari 248 F1; 2006 Canadian Grand Prix at Montreal © LAT

But, as noted, Trulli was 0.416 seconds behind in Q3, so allowing for the weight difference, it makes perfect sense for him to be where he was relative to Schumacher in that final session.

Schumacher knew he had to get past the Toyota at the start, and much rested on the new procedure. And while he had done lots of practice starts at the pit exit, when it really mattered, he got away badly (as did Massa further back). Not only did he fail to beat Trulli away, but Nico Rosberg got past before Turn 1. Perhaps a little flustered, Schumacher was then hustled out of the way by an aggressive Montoya.

The team admitted that they simply got caught out by rushing something new into active service before all the bugs were ironed out.

"We're trying to develop the start, we're obviously looking to win, not finish second," said Brawn. "So we took a bit more of a risk, and it didn't work very well. So we have to go back and understand it. As it turned out, I don't think it cost us anything, because Juan Pablo helped us out [by colliding with Rosberg]. But it wasn't a great start."

Seventh place with an ultra heavy fuel load... it didn't look good. But then luck began to go Michael's way, as it would continue to do for the remainder of the afternoon.

On the second lap, Montoya helped Rosberg into the wall, which put Schumacher into fifth. A brief safety car followed, and, as noted earlier, any yellow laps that stopped the others getting away were worth having. Then Fisichella was handed a drive-through penalty for a jumped start that hadn't actually earned him any benefit. He came out of the pits behind Schumacher, putting the Ferrari man up to fourth.

But despite all this good news, there was bad news was well. Trulli was running a second a lap slower than the leaders, and Schumacher could do nothing but sit behind the Toyota. While his extra fuel load meant that he would in all probability not have sat right on the tail of the Alonso/Raikkonen battle, he should have been a lot closer to it.

Gap Alonso to Trulli

Lap 5: 5.5s
Lap 10: 11.5s
Lap 15: 13.6s
Lap 20: 20.9s
Lap 22: 25.4s
Lap 23: Alonso pits

Trulli's pace tailed off dramatically in the laps before the stops, and that really hurt Schumacher. Indeed, when Alonso came in, the Spaniard was so far ahead of his title rival that he resumed still 10 seconds clear. Even with his pit delay, Raikkonen also got out in front of Schumacher, when the Finn came in on lap 25.

Schumacher finally found a way past the struggling Trulli on lap 24, but the next lap the Toyota man pitted anyway, so he only had one extra lap of clear air.

"It's frustrating, because obviously the first 20-25 laps we were sitting behind Jarno, and we dropped a pitstop," said Brawn. "Then, even with the strategy we had, it was going to be difficult, as we dropped a pitstop behind. That was really it.

Jarno Trulli (Toyota) runs ahead of Michael Schumacher (Ferrari), 2006 Canadian Grand Prix at Montreal © XPB/LAT

"Jarno was probably costing us the best part of a second early on. For a while he wasn't bad, but then he started to suffer, and then he was costing us a lot of time. I think just before he came in, his tyres were finished, and Michael was able to overtake quite easily."

On lap 23, still stuck behind Trulli, Schumacher had been as slow was 1:18.977. Now he began banging in laps in the mid-1:16, and he kept going and going until finally coming in on lap 32.

Here's an interesting thing. When Alonso headed down the pitlane on lap 23, Schumacher was 27.476 seconds behind. When the German came out of the pits on lap 33, he was 28.819 seconds behind Alonso. In other words, over that ten-lap segment of the race, Schumacher lost just 1.3 seconds to Alonso as his low fuel load paid dividends, and you can be sure that the world champion was not hanging around.

However, that also suggests that, even had he been right on the Renault tail when the Spaniard pitted, Michael wouldn't quite have had the pace to pit and still come out in front.

The strange track conditions made life difficult for everyone, as marbles accumulated off-line and made judging corner entries very hard. Like all his rivals, Schumacher, right on the limit, had a few moments.

"There was only one line, and it wasn't the line you'd expect, either," said Brawn. "People were taking avoiding action and clearing a line. You'd come into one corner and the line would be clean, and you'd come in the next lap and the line would be covered in rubbish. So the track was very, very difficult."

By now Schumacher had settled for third place, but there was still a twist in the tale of this race. When the safety car came out following Jacques Villeneuve's crash, Schumacher was some 39.2 seconds down on Alonso, and about 18 seconds behind third-placed Raikkonen. Luck went his way once again, and the gaps disappeared as the track went yellow, and Schumacher had his fire lit by the possibility of hunting down the McLaren for second.

Three lapped cars were between them in the queue - Jenson Button, Christian Klien and David Coulthard - and at the restart, with six laps to go, it didn't take Schumacher long to deal with them.

The lapped cars of Trulli and Heidfeld also had to be passed, but by the end of lap 66, with four to go, there was a three-second gap and no more cars between them. Schumacher cut the gap by nearly 0.3 seconds on lap 67, and then by a nearly a full one second on lap 68 with what turned out to be his fastest lap of the race.

It was then that Raikkonen went wide at the hairpin, repeating the mistake that cost him his first win at Magny-Cours a few years back. Schumacher gratefully slipped inside to gain second. Again he had some luck... but in this case he'd done his bit to make it happen by putting the Finn under pressure that he didn't need at that stage of the race. It was typical Schumacher - never say die...

Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso, post-race press conference; 2006 Canadian Grand Prix at Montreal © Reuters

Even then he didn't give up, and lap 69, the one that included the pass, was his second fastest lap of the race, just 0.007 seconds slower than the previous one! The general idea was to keep Alonso on his toes, but the Renault star was by now in cruise mode and was not about to make a silly mistake.

So that's how Schumacher got from a disastrous Friday practice, to seventh on the first lap, to a very relieved second by the flag. Luck played its part, but it was a typically strong performance from driver and team. Don't write them off just yet - a little bit more speed from the tyres and they could have beaten Alonso, just as the Renault man himself feared.

"It's two points in the wrong direction, but it's not finished," said Brawn. "It was alright in the race, but we weren't quite quick enough, so we've got to find some performance from somewhere. I don't think there was another tyre we could have used. There was a whole spread of tyres out there, and I don't think anyone did as good a job as we did.

"We're not going to change the cars before Indy, and we're going to be running similar tyres, so we just hope the surface and the conditions move a bit more towards us."

Even better, as far as Ferrari are concerned, no one is talking about the wings any more. BMW is the team with the headache.

"I'm glad it's moved to somebody else. I think you saw today our straightline speeds were very good, so I think there was wishful thinking from other teams that it might have hurt us, but it didn't. We're not part of the group that was lobbying against BMW. We don't get invited to those meetings..."